Is United States No Longer The Fattest Nation?

This doesn’t mean that Americans are curbing their appetite or exercising more, the rest of the world is just getting fatter. Peter Smith at Good Magazine writes:

It’s not exactly good news, but the United States is no longer the world’s fattest nation. It turns out that the rest of the world is gaining on us, putting on more weight at a faster pace. This is especially true in Pacific island nations and in the Middle East, where theUnited Arab Emirates Kuwait now represents the world’s fattest industrialized nation. Both regions seem to be struggling to adapt to modern, sedentary lifestyles over a rather short period of time.

The most recent data comes from an exhaustive country-by-country report on obesity from the Imperial College London, Harvard University, and the World Health Organization, which was published in The Lancet. A Body Mass Index (shown on the x and y axis above) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. A score of 25 to 30 corresponds with being overweight (represented by the light tan box above), while above 30 is obese (the dark tan box). As you can see, Pacific islanders (purple dots) had the highest BMI levels. Most of Europe (green dots) appears to be overweight, especially men (those green dots below the dotted line).